Nothing Personal
by FreestyleKneepad
Summary: Ex-con police officer Vi is thrown into the depths of her criminal past when she gets involved in a series of robberies that seem to be committed by her old gang. Some mature language, moderate violence.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooored."

My complaint came off less like a word and more like an animalistic grumble, echoing through the near-empty precinct offices not loud enough to sound like a shout, but just loud enough to cut through the white noise of rain gently pattering on the windows a few feet away. I let my arms hang limply, dangling on either side of the office chair I had made my own, and crossed my legs on the edge of the desk in front of me, pushing the chair back on its wheels until it felt like it would slip out from under me. It did.

I shouted with surprise as the back of my head landed on the thinly-carpeted floor, and for a few moments afterward the sound of the rain was drowned out by a steady stream of heated expletives as I rubbed the back of my head in an effort to make the sudden, throbbing pain stop by threatening the sensation with promises of bodily harm. It didn't make any sense, but swearing made it hurt less, so… go science?

"I've told you a thousand times not to do that," a voice said to me with an air of calm that barely managed to hide the boredom of the speaker. "This is an office environment, not our house."

I got to my feet and righted the chair, the fingers of one hand threaded through the pink dreadlocks spurting like a ponytail from the base of my skull, scratching incessantly. "I still think it's stupid that I have to stick around," I commented with annoyance, firing a glance at the speaker who sat all prim and proper a few desks away. "There's nothing to do but sit here and watch you read case files, and believe me, this episode of 'Cupcake Does Police Stuff' has been nowhere near as interesting as the golden ages of episodes five through eleventy-jillion."

The woman sitting at the desk tore her eyes from the files in front of her long enough to fire me an irritated glare, and it was just the reaction that brought a smile to my face. Sheriff Caitlyn, the woman in charge of the entire police force of the city of Piltover, was a ravishing beauty, with hair the color of midnight that almost looked violet in the right light and eyes of a piercing, cold blue that made her 'serious face' the kind of thing that terrified those criminals aware of her storied reputation. She had a slim figure, the kind that seemed weak until you saw her in action, where her speed and agility betrayed the athletic muscle hiding under her pale skin.

Her lips wore a shade of lipstick just a few shades darker than normal, the sort of thing that accentuated her features without being flat-out garish, and it made them look great even when pursed tightly in either thought or annoyance, as they were now. She turned her eyes back to the case file and brushed at her brow, ever-so-slightly tousling the sheet of her hair that ran down her neck and along her throat, curving softly above her (cough) ample chest. It was the sort of thing that seemed designed to tempt men and women alike, and even as a girl I found it hard to keep my eyes from following that hair down further. In fact, that's exactly what it was- a design, a cultivated, calculated beauty that was every bit as lovely as it could be, which served as a disarming tactic that helped hide the majority of her absolutely vicious and razor-sharp intellect. There was a reason she was the top dog on the food chain around this precinct, and it wasn't her good looks.

"If you want something to do," she said softly, her accent carrying with it an air of class and dignified status, "Then stop hurting yourself on other officers' chairs and come sort through case files with me." Her tone was measured, contained, and perfectly businesslike. Pretty much the opposite of mine.

"But Caaaaaaaaaait," I moaned, "That's the boring paperwork crap. I wanna rough somebody up, shake somebody down, scare the piss out of a jaywalker or a drunk driver or something." I pantomimed air jabs as I did, the movements as natural as breathing, and I could only wish there was someone at the receiving end so that I'd have something to do. Anything at all… excluding paperwork.

"Believe it or not, Vi," Caitlyn responded with that same measured tone, "This 'boring paperwork' is exactly the sort of thing you have in store for you now that you've been appointed to deputy status. Another requirement of the job is that you show up when I show up and you leave when I leave. We've been over this," she added with the tone of an annoyed mother, "Several times in fact."

"And yet you still haven't learned that I don't listen," I sighed as I sat back down in the chair. "What the hell am I supposed to do then, just twiddle my thumbs and wait for someone to show up and say 'please punch me, I stole candy from an orphan'?" I started to lean back again, but when I felt the wheels move the slightest bit I scrambled to regain balance before the back of my head got a sequel to its current pain.

"How much do you remember of your Academy training?" Caitlyn asked as she closed a case file and rested it atop a neat pile of other files on the desk.

"You mean that forced bootcamp you put me through when I signed up?" I asked as I rested my hands on my stomach, my fingers woven together. "The gun training, the grappling exercises- those were a lot of fun- and especially the part on interrogation. Well, the fun parts of interrogation, at least."

"What do you recall of the crime-solving process?"

I blinked. "There's a process?"

Caitlyn's groan of frustration was almost too quiet to hear, but I still heard it. She was trying really hard to not let it get to her, and despite her cast iron will, irritation was chipping away at her. "Your job was to punch criminals in the face, Vi," she said in an attempt to appeal to my base instincts, which was a resounding success.

"Correct," I replied with a grin.

"How do you think I decided who to send you after for the past few years?" she asked in as leading a question as she could manage.

I knew where she was headed, but why ruin the fun by playing along? "I dunno, spin the bottle?"

I could almost see a vein in Caitlyn's temple start to bulge. "Come over here, Vi." Her words were tight, restrained, and clipped very short. I smiled, got up and walked over obediently- hey, I may be snarky and sarcastic, but I'm not stupid enough to disobey Caitlyn when I've already been bugging the hell out of her. What do you take me for? "Since you're so eager to do something," she said as she thumbed through the numerous manila folders on the desk, "I want you to take a look through these files and choose one that you'll investigate starting tomorrow. I won't let you leave- or sleep here- until you've chosen one to my discretion."

My expression settling into something resembling a death row inmate awaiting execution as Caitlyn sorted out the case files into two separate stacks and pushed one towards me. "But Cait-"

"No complaining, Vi," she interrupted, her voice allowing absolutely no budging on the matter. "This is the sort of thing you have to learn sooner or later. Investigations aren't all action; believe it or not, occasionally there's police work involved."

I frowned as I pulled a chair from a nearby desk belonging to another absent officer who had vacated the precinct at the end of his shift like I wished I could do. We weren't in Caitlyn's fancy sheriff's office due to some recent fumigation, and mine… well, if you could wade through the trashed paperwork and discarded car parts I'd dragged in to tinker with, you were free to use the desk if you could find it under the rubble. So we sat in the main office area among the rows of detectives' desks, using their chairs and writing with their pens like we owned the place. It wasn't nearly the power fantasy I had hoped for.

Grumbling loud enough for Caitlyn to hear, I grabbed the top file on the stack, opened it, skimmed it just long enough for my brain to hurriedly verify that, yes, there was paper in there, then closed it and plopped it back down on the desk. "I'll do this one," I said with no small amount of annoyance, as if Caitlyn was asking me to do something terribly painful and unexciting, which was absolutely true.

The sheriff met my gaze evenly, and I saw a smile creep over her mouth. "Which case would that be?" she asked quietly.

"Hit-and-run," I answered shortly, trying to make it sound like I totally understood what I had read and wasn't just bluffing out of my backside. "I'll run the plates and see what vehicle it's registered to, and then nab the guy for questioning." I wasn't sure of half of what I had said, but I remembered Caitlyn saying it before, so I ran with it.

She couldn't hide the amused glitter in her eyes, which let me know how completely wrong I was before she said anything. "Is that what that file said?" she asked warmly as she reached over and gently uplifted it from its resting place amidst the other files.

"Yeah, I read it," I lied.

"Interesting," Caitlyn replied as she held it ready to open, but kept it closed between her thumb and forefinger. "I could have sworn the first file on that stack involved a series of safety violations at the Yordle Academy involving golem programming and the use of research that likely originated from Zaun and is therefore highly unethical and illegal to use in construction." She loosened her grip and the file fell open to the front page, as if she had mentally commanded it to do so. Her eyes lit up and she smiled. "Oh, what do you know? I was right."

I jutted out my lower lip in a frown that threatened to suck my furrowed brow and narrowed eyes into my nose. Caitlyn seemed unfazed and instead returned the file to the top of my stack and let the smile emphasize how little she cared for my perceived torment. "You have a job to do, Vi. One case, and you have to be able to explain it to me."

I snatched the file from the top of the stack and glared at it as if I wanted it to burst into flames. At the top of the first page, printed in big bold letters that I wouldn't have missed had I cared in the first place, read 'CASE B-1784: INFRACTIONS RELATING TO ZAUNITE RESEARCH PRACTICES AND HAZARDOUS GOLEM CONSTRUCTION'. Damn it, I hated being called out. I looked up to see the slightest hint of smug satisfaction on Caitlyn's face, but when I opened my mouth to shoot something back at her I realized she had taken my ammunition. The sheriff was too damn smart for her own good sometimes, and it pissed me off.

I spent the next ten minutes glazing over the various case files (despite being only half of the files on the desk it was quite a large stack), and after reading through various reports of taggers, dime-store robberies and scientific disputes I finished off the pile and immediately wanted those ten minutes of my life back. "Nada," I said pointedly as I dropped the last file onto the desk with the rest of the messy heap, "Not a damn thing worth doing in there."

Caitlyn, who seemed to have quite enjoyed the silence that diverting my attention had caused, offered a soft smile. "It's all worth doing," she responded sagely, "But I never told you that you'd enjoy it."

"Are you kidding me?" I asked rhetorically as I held up a file at random and shook it for emphasis. "This is beat cop work! Three or four of these were traffic violations!"

"The job isn't about glamour," Caitlyn said in terse response, picking up a file from her stack as she prepared to get back to her reading. "It's about protecting the people. Upholding the law." I glared in her direction, and realized she didn't notice- she was busy scanning the file, her features unreadable. So I decided I'd snag a file from her stack, the ones she hadn't let me read through. That got her attention. "Vi!" she snapped with surprise, but I had already gotten an eyeful before she was able to snatch the file from my fingers.

"Oh I see," I said with childlike glee, "You were hiding all of the good stuff in your stack, Cait!" As the file slipped from my fingers I was already grabbing another, and the grin on my face threatened to split my head in half starting at the corners of my lips. "Let's see here, domestic assault-" I began as she ripped the file away and I snatched another, "-ooh, this one's got murder written all-" and again she ripped it away and I grabbed another. This time, I distanced myself so that she'd have to run around the desk to get to me.

"Oh hey!" I said with excitement as she rounded the desk, "Armed robberies, my favorite!" Caitlyn darted towards the file but I planted the palm of my hand square on her forehead, keeping her at arm's length as she tried to get her fingers on the file. She may have been quick and agile, but I was taller, stronger and had longer limbs that she did. Hell, I was a strong enough girl that I could have done the same to most of the men in the precinct, too. "Why didn't you tell me about this one, Cait?" I joked as I skimmed the file with one-hand, poring over the details until I found one that stopped me dead.

The file listed all sorts of information, including the exact address of the banks hit, information on all of the witnesses present, and a list of suspects. It was the last one that froze the blood in my veins and sucked every ounce of fun I was having out of the moment. I felt the pressure against my hand slacken, and I turned my head to see Caitlyn regarding me, her blue eyes defeated but still calculating, sizing up my reaction. "You must have grabbed that one," she commented softly. "That's why I was keeping it."

"Cait, you had better be kidding," I said slowly, my brain struggling to wrap around the idea of what I had read. "Why is my old crew listed as suspects?" I didn't know how to feel- not betrayed, I had put my allegiance to them behind me a long time ago, but… confused, surprised, angry, all were valid emotions wrestling for real estate on my face. I slumped back down into the chair and Caitlyn returned to hers, her expression growing increasingly grim.

"We don't have any leads on this one," she said softly, deliberately, as if she had taken an hour to carefully choose each word she spoke, "But the modus operandi of the thieves matches that of-"

"The M.O. we had," I interrupted, my words growing hotter as I spoke them, "Was me punching a freaking hole in the wall."

"You weren't the only one with distinctive habits," Caitlyn replied calmly, reaching over to a side pile and grabbing a thick file with a list of names printed on the outside. My name was in the middle but had since been crossed out, the word 'REFORMED' written next to it in black ink. I didn't open the file; I knew the person behind each name more intimately than what a sheet of paper could convey. "They all had traits to their craft, signs of which are evident in the three heists we've been able to tie together so far."

"This can't be right," I said with disbelief as I tried not to see the pieces fitting together. I didn't want to think that the crew had gotten back together, not after all my efforts to stop what they had been doing. But like Caitlyn said, it looked like their work, and that was something I had trouble denying. "There has to be an explanation." I could feel anger beginning to boil in my gut, barely-contained hate for the people I had turned away. They had gotten every choice I'd had to change, and they hadn't. They didn't deserve my mercy. Even then, it didn't seem right. It had been ten years since I split off from them, since I had made the best choice of my life. A few years of interference on my part and eventually they fell off the map. The idea of them popping back up out of nowhere just… didn't click with me somehow. I didn't like what it could mean.

"There are some inconsistencies that have kept me searching for clues," Caitlyn said matter-of-factly. "The crew, excluding yourself, was five people. Eyewitness reports described two robbers at each heist. While they wore masks, the height, weight, and gender of at least one of the robbers changes depending on which witness from which heist you talk to." She crossed her arms and frowned slightly. "It doesn't add up, which means we don't have the whole picture."

"I'm taking this case," I said abruptly as I closed it and stood, tucking it underneath my arm. I made a move to head for the door, but Caitlyn was having none of it.

"You absolutely will not," she replied, standing as well with a hand out towards me. "Give me the file, Vi."

"No way," I responded, my eyes narrowed. "I'm going to find out what's going on here."

"You will have nothing to do with this case," Caitlyn said bluntly. "And that's an order."

"Screw orders," I retorted, "This is my crew we're talking about here."

"That's exactly why you'll have nothing to do with it," Caitlyn explained. "It's too personal for you. You can't look at it objectively." I could see it in her eyes, she was set in stone on this one. Dammit.

"Come on, Cait," I pleaded as she stepped slowly around the desk, "I know these guys better than you do, I can help on this one."

"_Give me the file, Vi._"

I looked Caitlyn dead in the eyes and found nothing but a steely resolution. "Cait, I-" I began, but felt the words catch in my throat. It felt like she was going to arrest me if I kept getting in her way, and even though I knew she wouldn't, the old fears it brought up within me were strong enough to make me wonder if I was wrong about her. I tried to fight it, but experience told me that once I had let the fear grip me, I had lost any say in the matter. This sort of emotion wasn't something rational. It was a childlike fear, the sort of terror that only came from monsters under the bed and had no basis in reason. It was a fear borne of a life spent on the wrong side of the tracks, where an entire subset of people- the same people who now employed me- existed just to ruin my life, to send me running whenever I saw them come knocking. It had been a long, long time since I had well and truly felt that fear, but every once in a while Caitlyn was able to evoke a semblance of it within me, to make me feel like a terrified child at the interrogation table, perhaps because of any officer I'd ever met, she had been the scariest. Honestly, I didn't expect her to get in my head like this, especially over something as trivial as a file, and it scared me just as much. Damn it, she was too good at her job sometimes.

"Here," I said quietly, "Take it." I let the file slip from my armpit into one hand, and I hesitantly moved it into Caitlyn's grasp. She didn't snatch it away from me this time, just accepted it with a businesslike politeness, her eyes never losing that iron willpower that scared the living daylights out of me. She was in absolute control of the situation, and she didn't need to say so or behave in a way that indicated it in order to make it abundantly clear to me. It was a feeling we were both familiar with, Caitlyn in charge and myself following orders no matter how I felt about them, and I felt like beating my head against a wall for the helplessness of the situation.

"Thank you, Vi," she said calmly, and placed it down on the desk with the others. "Head home, I'll see you there in an hour or so. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

I wanted to say something, anything to get myself on that case, but the words would form in my head and my mouth would refuse to say them out of fear. A swirling cauldron of emotions brewed in my gut, boiling hate and chilling fear mixing and bubbling away with nothing I could do to let them out, and for all it did to chew away at me I couldn't go against Caitlyn. If I asked, she'd probably say it was for my best interests, and she wasn't just saying it, either. I almost wished I hadn't seen the file, seeing as it would be the dominating topic on my mind for the next week.

I walked around the table wordlessly and left the precinct, stepping out into the cool rain without a hood or an umbrella. Even in a normal situation, I wasn't one of those girls that gave a crap about messing up makeup or hair. I found my bike in the parking lot, a custom job that was as much machine as it was experiment at this point, and made my way back to Caitlyn's mansion-like home (that's right, I live with the sheriff, great idea for an ex-con, right?) in the downpour.

I got in and parked my bike in time to see the door open, held by a diminutive yordle- a race of fuzzy squirrel-people that originated from Bandle City before many of them migrated to here in Piltover- that was the butler, servant and primary housekeeper of the estate. His bushy white eyebrows furrowed around his black-rimmed eyeglasses as he took a good look at me, and I noticed his equally-bushy, equally-white mustache twitch as he realized how soaked I was, and what that meant I would track through the entire house. I caught a glimpse of him adjusting the tie of his adorably small tuxedo and take off his white gloves, and knew he was preparing himself to clean up yet another one of my messes. If I hadn't been so emotionally drained, I probably would have smiled just from the thought of it.

I didn't blame him. I normally look like a mixture of punk rock and soldier, with pink hair that's buzzed short on the left side, grown to my shoulder on the right side and spills into a dreadlock-like ponytail in the back. The 'VI' tattoo on my left cheek makes me stand out more than most, as if the neck, arm, leg, and back tattoos didn't help, and in addition to having my hair plastered to my face by the rain, my reddish-brown leather jacket was soaked to the point of almost looking black. Underneath that I wore a grey bustier, which functioned less like lingerie or a camisole and more like bulletproof armor, given how much it was padded. My dark blue short shorts and striped tights had been equally soaked, their thin material providing no more defense from the cold and wet than they did from small arms fire (which is why I normally wore large plates of armor around them). As I stepped inside I stepped out of my treaded boots and left them at the door, and I almost missed the look of disgust the yordle shot me as I dripped water along the floor.

"Good evening, Miss Vi," the yordle greeted me courteously. I hated it when he was courteous.

"Hey Jeeves," I responded casually. His name wasn't Jeeves, it was Bradford, but I didn't care.

"Where is Miss Caitlyn?" he asked as I heard him wipe at the floor behind me. I could hear the annoyance in his voice, but he seemed to sense my depression. I didn't like him- hell, growing up on the streets made it impossible for me to adapt to the idea of living with servants in the first place- but that didn't mean he wasn't good at his job. Jeeves was actually a few decades older than Caitlyn, and had served her parents since she was born, transitioning to serving Caitlyn after she moved out on her own, even when I came in like a tornado of bad habits and attitude. He didn't much care for me either, but he was a good person.

"Give her an hour," I said softly, "Then call the cops if she doesn't show."

"That's not very funny," Jeeves commented, but since he had the sense of humor of a wet paper bag, I didn't take it as an insult. I peeled off my jacket, smiling as I heard the wet plop of it falling on the floor and Jeeves' subsequent squeal of indignation, then made my way to my bedroom.

Caitlyn's home is very much a symbol of wealth, and it comes directly from her background- Caitlyn was born to a wealthy statesman and an equally-wealthy scientist, and she's lived in clean upscale homes with servants and silverware sets worth more than some cheaper homes her entire life. Every room in the house has signs of wealth, from the detailed moulding on the corners of the ceilings to the trims on the tables and the flowered plants on the windowsills, kept in perfect health by the two or three servants that roamed the halls and made sure everything was spotless. Every room, that is, except my bedroom and the workshop I'd set up in the garage.

I grew up in the gutters doing whatever I could to get by, and while I've gotten past that, some things just don't go away, like the independent streak I developed in order to be as self-reliant as possible. I've never gotten used to the idea of people waiting on me, and rather than trying to adapt to a life of luxury I got in enough shouting matches with the servants to convince them to give me access to the basement where the laundry is done so that I can take care of my own stuff by myself and keep them from calling me 'Miss Vi' in that way that makes my skin crawl. Well, everyone except Jeeves has decided to cut the honorifics around me. Maybe that's his revenge for me calling him 'Jeeves'.

My room is significantly less glamorous than the rest of the manor. It used to be an elegant guest bedroom, with a four-post bed crafted out of fine cedar, framed by a pair of gorgeous artisan dressers and nightstands, and sitting opposite a beautifully-designed white vanity set complete with a mirror and drawers for makeup and other amenities. On a door to the side was a separate bathroom, complete with toilet, bath, and sink, all of which were of the finest porcelain and marble that you could have shipped into the city. In my first week in the manor I'd snapped the four posts off of the bed, tore down the dressers to use as firewood (I can't remember what for), accidentally destroyed the toilet with a poorly-swung wrench and chucked the vanity set out the window. There's no clever wordplay on that last bit, I literally took the vanity set and threw each individual piece of it out of the window. Ain't no girly-girl crap in my room.

Since my arrival the elegant but subdued wallpaper was covered with posters of various bands, their names ranging from the counter-culture "Rage Against the Hextech" to the more overt "Blood Tsunami" and "Spellfister".The carpet got ripped up when I kept losing screws and nuts in its shag, and the hardwood floors beneath could use some renovation that I would never allow the servants to perform. It was an absolute wreck, a stain on the pristine glamour of the manor at large. But it was my room, and dammit, I liked it.

I tried to sleep, to force myself to unconsciousness, but thoughts twisted and spun in a maelstrom in my head until I felt like I'd never sleep again. What could make the old crew active again? It had been ten years since I'd split off from them, why were they starting back up now? Was it even them in the first place? If it wasn't, who would imitate them? "God dammit," I groaned softly to myself, wrapping my worn-out pillow around my head in a desperate attempt to drown out the questions. It wasn't until I turned on my stereo and put in a loud metal album that I managed to drown out the thoughts, and unlike anyone else in the city, I found it easier to drift off to sleep on a sea of growling vocals and power chords.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

_I saw the interrogation room as if outside myself, without physical body and almost without entity, floating through the bare white concrete walls and the clean silver table and the single unfurnished lamp as if incorporeal and ghostlike. Even the very-real body of the girl in the interrogation chair, cuffed to the table by a pair of handcuffs put through a steel loop welded to the surface, was unaware of my presence, her eyes darting around the room in nervous fear but never falling on me. I knew this room all too well, and while I had given more than a few beatings here in the name of interrogation (and a good number in the name of stress release), this was the interrogation room before all of that violence, before my influence. It was sterile, cold, and utterly unforgiving. It terrified me to this day, for reasons that I was about to dive back into, whether I was ready or not._

_After all, the girl in the chair was me. Younger, but still me._

_Young Vi was a thin girl, not wiry but not as muscular as I had become over the years on the force. I had always been that thin until I had made it out and managed to actually eat three square meals a day on a regular basis, but at this point, when I had been subsisting on what I could steal, I almost appeared anorexic in comparison to my physique now. There was defiance in me, but no power to back it up. All talk and no action. More importantly, there was a fear that ran through everything Young Vi did, a terror that was subtle and small, but ran deep to the bones- a fear of being caught. And here I was, caught, cornered, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Young Vi looked like a scared puppy, and in some ways it made me angry at her for not being tough enough._

_In stark contrast, Young Caitlyn looked like she was ready to execute me right there. Somehow- call it intuition plus memory- I knew she was coming before the door opened, so I was watching Young Vi closely as the doorknob turned, and I saw her almost jump out of her skin in fright when it slammed right open. In walked Caitlyn, probably twenty years old at the time, wearing a white button-up shirt with two buttons undone down to her chest and a black business skirt that framed her hips in ways that would have made it hard to avoid staring if I wasn't in this as an omnipresent observer. While I definitely preferred the more mature Caitlyn I knew today, this one had something that she lacked- passion, spunk, youthful energy, something that had been reined in over years of practice and discipline and only let loose in the rarest of circumstances. A fire blazed in this Caitlyn's eyes, the fire of an angel of justice on the warpath, and she was pissed at me._

_"Uncuff me, dammit," Young Vi said hotly, although the implied threat in her voice was empty. She was trying to put up an act. Caitlyn didn't buy it._

_"I don't think so," she said with just as much fire. She held a file in her hands as thick as some encyclopedias, and when she dropped it on the table it made an echoing thump that caught Young Vi's sharp tongue in her throat. "Before we get started I'd like to make something abundantly clear. You are a criminal. I don't like you, I don't tolerate your attitude, and I certainly do not trust you enough to uncuff you. Get used to all three." The acid dripping through her words could have melted through the table._

_Young Vi was silent. Smart girl. Caitlyn took note of her silence, and a soft smile crossed her lips. "Glad to see you understand me. Now, let's talk."_

_"Am I under arrest?" Young Vi asked apprehensively. It wasn't so much a fear of being caught as it was a general fear and dislike of police, but Caitlyn treated it as both. To my surprise, she laughed. It was a light, silly laugh, as if a small child had made a joke too mature for it to fully understand._

_"Oh, heavens, yes," she said with a smile that she had to fight to subdue. "You may have chosen to come with me, but don't think for a second that means I'll just let you go. You would have ended up here, whether you agreed to it or not."_

_"That's not fair," Young Vi complained impotently._

_"It's not my job to be fair," Caitlyn replied coolly, losing her humor. "It's my job to catch bad guys. Which brings me… to you."_

_She emphasized her point with the files, drawing one out of the stack in the larger folder. She opened it up, and from my omnipresent position over her shoulder I could see it was my file, with my mugshot that I knew had been taken only hours earlier at this point in time as well as a rap sheet longer than I was proud of and a lot of empty spaces where information should have been. "What's your name?" she asked with a neutral tone, pen at the ready in one hand. It was one of those automatic pens Piltover was known for, that kept ink inside the pen itself in ways that old geezers would probably call an abomination of nature._

_"Vi," Young Vi said._

_"Is that your real name?"_

_"No."_

_"What is your real name?"_

_"None of your business."_

_Caitlyn looked up from the file to see Young Vi smirking, suddenly a bit more comfortable in her metal chair._

_"It's absolutely my business," Caitlyn replied._

_"Lady, you could marry me and grow old with me over a hundred years, and I still wouldn't tell you on my freakin' deathbed." If I had ghostly lips I'd have grinned. Preach it, sister._

_Caitlyn's eyes narrowed. Young Vi's cuffed hands balled into fists, almost as if by reflex._

_"Let's discuss your record," Caitlyn said, her flat tone defusing some of Young Vi's defiant spunk. "Armed robbery, assault and battery, excessive force, more armed robbery, more assault, petty larceny…" She trailed off, but I could see the list she was reading from and it went on for another page and a half. I wasn't proud of any of it now, but Young Vi treated it like an awards ceremony, smiling as she went over the list. To her, it was thunder to steal from Caitlyn, and in that moment I felt ashamed of her. I had a feeling it wouldn't be the last time during this… whatever this was. "You've got quite a criminal record, enough for me to lock you away for a long time."_

_"What's stopping you?" Young Vi asked. I could read her thoughts through her eyes, and it seemed as if she was praying she'd get an answer that gave her a chance._

_"You are," Caitlyn said calmly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I have a feeling our little chat will determine exactly what happens to you. I'd recommend you choose your words carefully, but given your past it doesn't seem to be something you'd concern yourself with."_

_"Yeah, yeah, bite me," came the punky girl's response, as if it had gone from lungs to mouth without even passing by the brain._

_"Exactly," Caitlyn responded, and the smile that tugged at the very corners of her lips told me how unsurprised she was. She returned her attention to the rap sheet and pored over it, her expression unreadable. A solid minute of silence later, Caitlyn's eyes left the paper and returned to the pink-haired perpetrator. "What changed, Vi?"_

_"I don't know what you're talking about," Young Vi responded, and the lack of hesitation before she spoke gave away how practiced the response had been._

_Caitlyn knew as well- I could see it in her eyes- but decided to humor me. "I remember the first time we met," she said softly, laying the file on the table once again. "When I tried to arrest you, you dropped a building on me."_

_"I don't see the problem," Young Vi snarked, "You got the dirt out of your hair."_

_"This time around, you gave up without a fight, which should go against everything you believe in."_

_"You had a gun to my head."_

_"That certainly hasn't stopped you in the past. In fact, it seems to have been a strong motivator to fight, if a few of your assault charges are to be believed."_

_"I don't take kindly to bullies."_

_"Which further fails to explain why you gave up," Caitlyn countered. "You don't give up. It is likely one of the more irritating things about you."_

_"I have my reasons," she managed. Far from defiant and tough- something was eating at her._

_"And those would be…?" Caitlyn pressed._

_"I-"_

_Anticipating another joke or lie or flat-out refusal to cooperate (and odds were good she was right), Caitlyn interrupted her. "Vi, do keep in the forefront of your mind that the only thing keeping you in this room as opposed to the jail cell you'd spend the rest of your life in is my mercy and my curiosity. I do not appreciate snark, and neither will the warden."_

_Young Vi's mouth had still been open when she was interrupted, and after a moment she clamped it shut. I could see her expression changing, and I wished I could see straight into her head, into the roiling brew of emotions and conflict she was wrestling with. I knew well enough to guess, though- after all, it had been me at that table, and I could still remember how I felt about the whole deal._

_It had been two years at this point since I had split with my old gang, since I had cut ties and made the call to do something right. I'd gone from stealing with them to stealing from them, trying to make it as hard for them to work as I could. Stealing was still stealing, however, and that's what landed me here. I could see it written all over my younger self's face- she thought she was in the right, that she was even better at cop work than the cop. While I knew better now, I couldn't much blame her. If things went south with the force I'd go right back to doing what she did, and without a second thought. I'd just be smarter about it. Break fewer laws. …Maybe._

_"I've made a lot of mistakes," Young Vi began, and the way Caitlyn's eyebrow raised told me about a million sarcastic retorts had flooded through her brain in a matter of instants. Fortunately, none of them made it to her mouth. "I'm trying to make up for them." She looked as if she wanted to continue, but fell silent._

_"You had a change of heart," Caitlyn murmured, almost too quiet to hear if there had been anything else in the room to create noise._

_"Yeah," Young Vi responded in a moment of honesty._

_"What provoked it?" Caitlyn asked softly._

_The young girl didn't respond. She sat there in the chair, staring down at her hands._

_"What provoked it, Vi?" Caitlyn asked again, more forcefully._

_The assertion in Caitlyn's voice elicited a reflexive reaction from Vi, and her two cuffed hands balled into fists. "You don't need to know," she said._

_"On the contrary," the sheriff replied, "I very much do. And I'll find out, whether or not you decide to tell me." She moved to the closed door and knocked twice, and a detective on the other side of the door opened it promptly. Caitlyn stepped through and the door closed behind her, leaving me with myself in the cold room. I tried to pass through the door, to force my view of the scene into that second room, to hear their conversation, but something rooted me here, kept me locked into the memories of my past, prevented me from understanding every side of the story. Time passed at a snail's pace, and I waited as patiently as I could while I studied what I had once been._

_I could see fatigue on my younger self's face. I wasn't a talker, much less someone capable of the kind of mental gymnastics that would be required to outmaneuver Caitlyn, and yet still I had tried. I was stubborn, and that stubbornness was costing me any trust Caitlyn might have been able to grow for me. Stupid, stupid mistake. If I could just open up, if I could just talk to myself. I tried to find the words, to whisper thoughts into the criminal's head. I wanted to tell her to put her trust in the sheriff, let the walls down, let her know everything. I couldn't find a way to bridge the gap, to break the shackles of the spectator and take an active role in my own past. My mind thundered with silenced cries of protest, but in the end it amounted to nothing. I saw the fear in her eyes, saw the despair in the way her shoulders slumped, the way she felt as if she was about to spend the rest of her life in a very deep hole. Thoughts of digging out hadn't begun to occur to her, and why should they? She'd been caught, cuffed, chained, left to rot in an empty room that lacked hope above all else. To this day I still avoid this room unless someone else is around. It's too quiet, too empty. It scares the hell out of me._

_I saw Young Vi's shoulders visibly tighten as the door reopened and Caitlyn stepped back inside. Just like that the walls went back up, the defiance and stubbornness raised like shields against the onslaught of the cop who, dammit Vi, just wanted to do the right thing._

_Caitlyn took a seat, dropping another file on the table along with the rest. She opened it and began reading, and a pregnant silence filled the room, broken only by the soul-wrenchingly loud sound of a page turning every so often. I could see the silence getting to Young Vi, how it made her skin crawl and her brow furrow in annoyance. She was even more impatient back then, which was saying something._

_"You gonna ask questions?" Vi asked, annoyed._

_"That depends," Caitlyn responded, never letting her attention drift from the file that the young girl could not see. She had calmed significantly, and now I knew it was very deliberate. Caitlyn in her youth had fire to match my own, but she also had brains. She knew when to be forceful and when to be patient. More importantly, she knew that this situation called for more of the latter._

_Silence, again. Caitlyn was leading her on, and they both knew it._

_"Depends on what?"_

_Caitlyn smiled, so slightly that I almost wasn't sure it had happened. "Whether or not I'll get an answer," she commented, "As opposed to posturing and defiance simply for its own sake."_

_"You wouldn't believe me if I did tell the truth," Vi responded, both annoyed and the slightest bit hurt. I wasn't sure if Caitlyn had picked up on the second part, but from experience I guessed she had._

_"You haven't tried, have you?"_

_Vi didn't respond to that one. Caitlyn smiled softly, then closed the file and looked across the table to her. "You don't talk to the gang anymore, do you?" Caitlyn asked._

_Young Vi's eyes widened slightly. She hadn't been expecting that question. She didn't look up, just stared at her hands, emotions of guilt and anger and fear battling for control of her expression._

_"No," she said, "I don't."_

_"How long has it been?"_

_This answer came faster. "Two years."_

_"What provoked you to split off?" Caitlyn asked, back to the question from before. She said the word 'provoked' in a very deliberate fashion, making it clear that she was looking for an answer to something very specific._

_"…It wasn't right," Vi said slowly, after quite some time laboring over the words._

_"What wasn't right?"_

_Silence. Caitlyn frowned at Vi, then reopened the file and began reading it again. She was patient, more patient than Vi was, but more importantly, she was searching for answers that weren't being given. I could almost see the puzzle being assembled in her head._

_"What's that file?" Vi asked._

_"Building and construction codes, specifically damage summaries. Every collapse, support failure and cave-in for the last five years." She glanced up at Vi's face while she spoke, and immediately noticed the way she reacted when the word 'cave-in' was spoken. "Right, cave-in it is." Caitlyn was smart- she'd listed them to test Young Vi's reactions, and read her like a book._

_"I didn't-" Young Vi stammered._

_"No, you didn't," she replied with an amused tone to her voice as she thumbed through the files. "And you wouldn't. This method is faster and requires less attitude on your behalf. You're welcome, I'm certain I just saved you quite a lot of effort trying to act all tough to the big bad policewoman." I would have smiled if I could- snark like that wasn't something I got to hear from Caitlyn every day, and the way my younger self looked as if she'd been slapped across the face was delightful, even if it had once been me._

_"Th-That's illegal!" Vi exclaimed, flustered. That got a bright little giggle from the sheriff._

_"Why, whatever are you talking about?" she purred. "I'm simply jumping to conclusions based on assumptions made through simple observation. Grunt detective work, really. It's not my fault that I'm right more often than not." She came to a section of the files that made her eyes twinkle, and with a smile she pulled out three sheets of paper and laid them on the table, clearing the rest of the mess and organizing it gently into stacks on the side so that the interrogation room's table looked all nice and orderly._

_"What're these?" Vi asked, trying to sound tough but mostly sounding like an angry child who wasn't getting her way. Being surprised by Caitlyn's smarts seemed to have forced her out of her shell, and while she was just as defiant, it was with a renewed sense of vigor. Idiot, she'd be even easier to read._

_"The three most likely times when things went sour," Caitlyn said softly, gesturing to each in turn. "We have a smelting factory that had issues with tampering that led to multiple casualties when molten steel flooded a floor, we have an old refinery that was robbed while condemned and came down on the robbers, and we have a mine that caved in when an attempt to steal the lode went bad." Again, she watched Vi's face while listing the incidents, and the slightest furrowing of Vi's brow in memory of the mines told her what she was looking for. "Mines, then, was it?"_

_That got my younger self all kinds of angry. She growled, slamming her hands impotently against the table in a loud thump, accompanied by the metallic jangling of the cuffs around her wrists. Caitlyn watched, surprisingly patient, one hand resting against her pursed lips as she examined Young Vi like a specimen, an exhibit meant to be studied. I'd seen that look before, and I had an idea of what she was doing. She'd told me once about body language, how subtle clues and nervous tics could identify key emotional responses and help a detective come to conclusions about the sincerity of statements. Naturally, I didn't listen to a word of it, but when she kept repeating it, certain things stuck. Enough for me to notice when she was trying something like that._

_"What happened in the mines, Vi?" Caitlyn asked the pink-haired girl calmly, her stiff posture and measured tone much more reminiscent of what she would become than what she had been at that point in her life. "What made you change?"_

_My younger self was silent, her face lowered to stare into her lap, and even without observing up close I could see- hell, I could feel the way she seethed, her shackled anger empty and worthless but burning no weaker for it. She wasn't trying to hide her emotions, and the thought of lying or denying it hadn't so much as formed in her mind for a fraction of an instant. The memories were too raw, too vivid, and too powerful to hide. Her hands balled into fists so tight that I heard her knuckles pop, and I was sure Caitlyn was grateful for the restraints but still prepared to make a move should she try to lash out._

_"They wanted… to leave," Vi spoke slowly, her voice trembling with a cauldron of emotions stirred into a frenzy by her anger. "Leave them all behind and save our own asses."_

_"The miners?" Caitlyn pressed cautiously._

_Vi didn't answer directly, but continued on as if she had confirmed it. "I wanted to stay behind and help, but they tried to force me to leave. I fought back. We split up there. I did what I could, but so many died..."_

_"Seventeen."_

_"Seventeen," Vi confirmed, "And thirty-five injured."_

_Caitlyn's eyes widened slightly, almost imperceptibly. "You know the statistics?"_

_"They're not fucking statistics," Vi spat back, her head whipping up to meet Caitlyn's gaze. There was a fire there in Vi's eyes, a terrible fire that burned into her soul. I knew that fire, and I knew where it came from- a place of pain, a hole in me I wasn't sure I'd ever fill. Just thinking about it could make my hands feel sweaty, as if slick with innocent blood. "They're people. They had lives and fucking families, and it's all gone because my crew cared more about getting out than doing something right for once. Seventeen kids lost their fathers, and it's my fault."_

_Caitlyn opened her mouth to speak but closed it a moment later, again letting the knuckle of her first finger rest on her lip. She wanted to ask what made this different, why Vi could sleep at night lying and cheating and stealing but the idea of death affected her so strongly. I saw it written on her face, and so did my younger self. "I've done a lot of bad things," Vi said softly, her eyes falling to the file on the table. "I've destroyed buildings and beaten people and robbed men blind. I've never killed an innocent man until that day. You can fix a building, heal bruises, make back your money. But when someone you love is dead," she paused as her throat choked up, "…there's nothing you can do to make the hurt go away."_

_Vi's words fell on a deafening silence, hanging in the air like the physical manifestation of the tension in her voice, like a fog that choked at Caitlyn's throat and threatened to overwhelm her careful self-control. I saw it in her eyes, saw the way the message behind Vi's words had resonated with some small part of her, and I saw how it made her look at the pink-haired, tattooed, punk-rocker criminal in a different light. She pushed gently on the edge of the table, nudging her chair away so she could stand up. She left the room without another word, and I watched my younger self droop, her head hanging as she fought back tears with every scrap of willpower she had left. I felt time slow as one glistening tear fell, and in the space between her eye and her lap, I saw that tear blur the very air, warping it like an invisible field. It spread, blurring the details of the room as it expanded, and with the blurring sensation came darkness as I felt myself drift away, further and further from the room until my mind slipped from slumber and returned to the world._

I didn't wake with a start, suddenly upright with a short squeal of surprise. I just kind of… woke. I could feel a thin layer of cold sweat on my brow and wiped at it with one hand as I yanked at the blanket, trying to warm up a bit more. It hadn't been too bad earlier in the night, but with autumn fast approaching the manor chilled significantly at nights. I tried to clamp my eyes shut again even though I didn't want to, but as the moments dragged out into eons around me I could feel myself waking up, shaking off the dregs of sleep and becoming increasingly alert. Which meant thoughts of the case came back to mind. Awesome.

After a few more minutes attempting to bludgeon my conscious mind back into slumber through sheer force of willpower, I conceded and sat up, grumbling something about needing anesthesia to sleep under my breath. Even through the haze of waking (and it was worse for someone like me who cursed 'morning people' under their breath), I couldn't stop myself from thinking about the case. Yeah, I wasn't supposed to take part in it, but was I going to let something like 'rules' stop me from getting to the bottom of this? If my old crew was implicated in something like this, I had to be the one to see it through. Not anybody else.

I checked the clock and grimaced. The sun wouldn't even be out yet. Everyone in the house was likely still sleeping, and for all of my attitude and toughness, I kept as quiet as humanly possible. You do not want to wake up Caitlyn for no good reason, just trust me on this. I made my way down to the kitchens to fix myself something for breakfast, trying my best to be quiet and yet still look tough on the off-chance that someone ran into me. This portion of the manor was generally where the servants spent a lot of time, and while nothing was off-limits to Caitlyn, she wasn't a fantastic cook so she generally stayed out and let them do what they did best. I had no such notions, and as far as I was concerned nowhere in the manor was off-limits to me. Yes, that includes Caitlyn's room. I'm a bad girl, after all.

The kitchen, while less-frequented by the lady of the manor, was no less expensive and decadent, although due to its purpose it was more utilitarian by nature than the embellished hallways and ostentatious living areas. Having exhausted the limits of my fancy words, suffice to say that it's a pretty place, but the prettiness doesn't get in the way of food preparation. The marble countertops were kept almost perpetually clean, despite my occasional urge to do something ridiculously messy like mixing a cake by throwing every ingredient into a heap in a corner and punching it until it mixes. Which, by the way, is incredibly fun and a great way to piss off the hired help.

I turned on the kitchen lights and immediately headed to the refrigerator, rustling around for ingredients to a sandwich. I knew how to cook, thanks to enough defiance to refuse to have food made for me but not enough defiance to refuse to be taught how, but this was one of those situations where I didn't feel like trying, not with what had been on my mind since last night. I found myself lost in my thoughts rapidly, the only sound in the room from a coffee pot gently percolating on the countertop in the corner. I was waist-deep in the vegetable drawer when a high-pitched voice almost made me jump out of my skin.

"Good morning, Miss Vi."

I fought back a surprised curse and tried to make it look like a chill hadn't just ran a lap of my spinal cord. "Morning, Jeeves," I replied as casually as I could muster.

If Jeeves had seen my surprise, he made no mention of it. Now that I was listening for it, I could hear his little yordle feet hobble about behind me, likely gathering things for Caitlyn's breakfast in an hour or so. "What has you up this early?" he asked.

"Can't sleep," I mumbled as I found the cold cuts and snagged a jar of mayonnaise to go with them.

"And why is that?" he pressed.

I debated telling him 'none of your damn business', but thought against it. Jeeves may have been entirely too polite and entirely too proper, but I was the only person around here who held it against him. I didn't hate the little yordle, we just didn't see eye to eye. Besides, I was still too tired to be a big fat jerk to him. "It's a case," I said grimly, "It's dug up old memories."

I closed the door to the fridge in time to see Jeeves' nod sagely, watching me from his perch on a stool by the oven. The nearby door to the restroom was ajar, which explained why I hadn't seen him at first. "It is good that you worry about your past," he said with the tone of a sensei delivering a lesson, "So that you don't repeat it."

"Yeah yeah," I dismissed him as I reached for a loaf of bread in one of the drawers, "I feel so enlightened now."

"I get the distinct feeling, however," Jeeves continued, "That you are not actually on the case. You have just involved yourself because it is something close to you."

"What makes you think that?"

"I have seen it happen enough times to notice the pattern. You take everything personally, Vi."

"I do not!" I shot back, annoyed. I saw the look on his face and realized what I'd just done. "Shut up. I can be impersonal."

"Not very well," Jeeves commented, "But that does not detract from your intentions."

I looked up from my sandwich construction with a skeptical glare. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Jeeves sighed. "You've lived here for eight years, Miss Vi. I would have alerted Miss Caitlyn to the threat of your presence a long, long time ago had I any reason to. While I do not appreciate your attitude, your attire, the way you treat inanimate objects or your approach to problem-solving, I find your motives to be sound."

I smiled and my voice dripped with saccharine. "Oh gee whiz, Jeeves. You're such a pal."

"I also do not appreciate your sense of humor," Jeeves said flatly. "Or your penchant for sobriquet."

"Soby-what?"

"Nicknames."

"Ah." I finished making the sandwich and made my way to the pantry for something to eat with it. "So you think I should do it?"

"I assume you want to know if I approve of your involvement in a personal case."

"I wasn't asking if I should throw the sandwich at your face," I joked, "But if you're down, I'm down."

"Of course you shouldn't involve yourself," Jeeves responded, hopping off of the stool and dragging it towards the coffee pot. "But we both know that something as silly as procedure and logic would never stop you or- heaven forbid- give you pause for rational thought." He pulled out two china cups and poured the coffee, then nudged one slightly towards me. I glowered at him- we both knew I didn't like him doing things for me- but my lethargy made it hard to ignore the sweet temptation of java. I took a sip from the cup without looking in his eyes, and the piping hot coffee singed the tip of my tongue slightly but was no less invigorating.

"You really do care," I said sarcastically, and took a bite of the sandwich. "Wrrph yph trrph Cwwph?"

Jeeves' irritation was palpable. "Maybe you should finish that mouthful."

I did, and grinned as a counter to his glare. "Will you tell Cait?"

"Eventually," he admitted. "She has every right to know, and if she asks I will not lie. Besides, if you were to get hurt, she would need to know where you were in order to save your from your own poor decisions."

"Aww, you're such a pal." I raised my mug towards him in mock toast, then took a sip.

Jeeves nodded, then finished his coffee and went to wash the cup and put it away. "I must prepare breakfast in a few minutes," he said softly. "I'd appreciate it if you left before I began."

"Sure," I said before scarfing down another mouthful of sandwich. "Sheyww."

"I'm sorry?" Jeeves asked.

I took another bite and repeated, trying and failing to hide the smile in my eyes. Jeeves shot me a look, and I waved on my way out the door. I had given it some thought, and I had a good idea of where I needed to go. If the crew really was doing these heists, I might have been able to find something if I retraced years-old steps. It was possible that they were still using the old hideout, and if not, there could have still been things to learn there. It wasn't much, but it was a start.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

By the time I had reached the outskirts of the city I could see the sun slowly beginning to rise, the sky transitioning from navy blue to an eruption of oranges and reds that lit the sky like a fireworks display. It was enough light to see the boarded-up old restaurant that had sat above the safehouse we'd used when we needed to lay low. It once bore bright red paint that had since faded and chipped, and the old sign trimmed with green and gold and orange was nowhere to be found, likely stolen at some point for reasons I'd never find out. The primarily-wood framework of the restaurant was intact, but missing pieces here and there left holes in the wall, and that combined with the shattered windows gave me the idea that either this place had been completely untouched for quite some time, or that someone was trying really hard to make it look like that.

I parked my bike in an alleyway nearby and nestled it just behind a trash bin to keep it out of view from the main street. I hadn't seen anyone since I got here, but I'd lived in this part of town before and I knew the score. If they couldn't see it, they couldn't steal it. I felt every step I took echo in the empty streets, and it set me on edge more than if there had been people around. I wore my usual outfit but had left the heavy gray armor plates at home, my only battle-ready equipment being the hextech pack on my back and the powerful gauntlets that were effectively a second skin thanks to years of practice and overuse.

I circled around to the back of the restaurant through the alley and found a large hole blown in the wall- my own handiwork from years ago. There had been a raid on this place years ago, shortly after I'd graduated from the police academy, and I had lead it. It started with a standoff, and it had been up to me to get through the front lines. They had all the main entrances covered, and there really weren't many other good points of entry into the restaurant. So I had made one. The edges of the hole showed signs of wear and tear, as if it hadn't been touched at all since I had made it at the start of the raid, and instead had been left alone for years. It gave the restaurant the feel of a building torn apart by war and left there to rot like a carcass in the sun. It didn't make me feel any more comfortable.

I stepped through cautiously, trying my best to remain alert as my thickly-treaded boot stepped down among the rubble and drywall scattered on the floor in my wake so many years ago. The sounds of scuffling rock made me freeze, but nothing accompanied it, no sign that anyone nearby- if anyone was nearby- had heard it. I made my way through the back rooms where the stale smell of age hung over the dust-covered countertops and cooking equipment left overturned and undisturbed to a janitor's closet in the back corner of the restaurant. It was larger than most, easily enough room for four or five people to stand inside, and it, like the rest, bore no signs of disturbance, with a few exceptions. The mop bucket was bone dry, but didn't bear a layer of dust like the cleaning solvents on the shelves or the dingy, dead lightbulb in the socket. Marks along the floor showed where it had rested and where it had been moved, dragged across the ground with mop in tow to expose the middle of the floor, where I knew a trap door lay hidden.

It took me a second to remember where the catch was for the trap door, but soon I found it- a small, almost invisible switch worked into the frame of the closet door was painted to the same color of the wall, a dingy grey that matched the unpainted concrete and made it impossible to find if you didn't know what you were looking for. It took a few tries to flick the small switch with the tip of one large and clunky metal finger, but when I got it I heard a soft mechanical whirring and a noticeable crack opened in the ground, then a five-foot-by-five-foot square of the floor sunk down a few feet and slid back, exposing a set of utilitarian steel stairs leading down into darkness. I noticed immediately that the stairs bore no sign of age, and that the mechanism for opening the trapdoor worked perfectly and without the slightest squeak, meaning it had been oiled recently. I wasn't the only person to visit this safehouse in the last few years. Fan-freakin'-tastic.

I let a soft sigh slip out of my mouth, careful not to be too loud, as I realized what that meant. I suppose I had been nursing an idea in the back of my mind that Caitlyn had been wrong in her assumption, that the group had disbanded and there was no sign of them anywhere in the city. It wasn't born of affection for the crew, the emotions I felt towards them were nothing simple. They had raised me, taught me everything I'd needed to know to survive, they had fed me and sheltered me and loved me. That counted for a lot. They had also trained me to be apathetic towards the needs of others, to take what I wanted, to think only of myself and to lie and cheat and steal to get my way, and all of that counted for a lot more. I'd never really figured out how I felt about them, but I had a feeling some of the things I'd see down there would force me to think on it.

I stepped down into the darkness as gently as I could, only turning on the flashlight I had brought with me when it became clear that the light of the morning could not penetrate the walls and help me see better. I didn't like it, but it was better than fumbling around in the dark. The place had a musty scent, like it hadn't been cleaned in a long time, and I could see the particles of dust hanging in the air. I coughed once before my eyes fell on the light switch near the stairs. I wasn't sure if I was right, but if I was… I reached over and flicked the switch, and after a brief sputter the lights in the safehouse flickered to life, bringing with them a sense of conclusion that settled like a stone in my gut. Lightbulbs don't last this many years. Someone had definitely been here.

A sense of urgency added haste to my step but I forced myself to slow down, be deliberate, look for every clue I could find. If I was going to get anything out of this, it wouldn't be by lying in wait for whoever was coming home. Patience and subtlety were not some of my virtues, and I did not want to be waiting down here while someone got tipped off and tried to lock me in to starve to death.

The safehouse was slightly larger than the name would imply, but it was very much safe- it had been built years back during Piltover's last war (which, thanks to the city's rapid technological progress, was a very, very long time ago). The edges of the city had seen constant attack, so small bunkers or fortified cellars were not uncommon around here, and if left unwatched often became homes for the vagrants and homeless folk that frequented the outer edges. In this case we had a working agreement with the owner of the restaurant, which provided us with food and complete ownership of the safehouse in exchange for protection from some of the other shady elements and roving criminals around.

This safehouse had been designed to hold at least eight or ten people comfortably, and so the six of us had not had any problems making it feel somewhat homey. The stairs led from a small entrance room into the main room, a large hexagonal area about twenty-five feet from one wall to its opposite with one door leading in from the stairs and the three walls opposite it bore doors into three smaller rooms, about big enough for two people to sleep in. The walls were bare concrete, the kind designed to resist everything from explosions to gunfire, and the floor was equally bare but also had a fine coat of dust and dirt from time and the minutest bit of water erosion.

Small signs of the home it had been still stuck to the walls and sat shoved into dirty corners and under tables and chairs, but the majority of the safehouse had been stripped bare, right down to the cold concrete. It had happened thanks to the raid- we managed to bust in past the owners who had been trying to defend the safehouse but they were just distractions, buying time for the crew to escape. I had left shortly after but I had heard the place had been stripped bare, most of it taken as evidence to figure out where they might have gone.

I still remembered the raid, and the evidence left behind in the safehouse only made the memories more vivid. Thanks to the delve into my interrogation that my subconscious mind had decided to subject me to, I'd had memories of the raid and everything that had led up to it bouncing around in my head since I'd decided to step out of the door. Now the memories had shifted to the people who had lived here, the crew I had ran with.

_The interrogation room felt slightly less cold and miserable this time, but it wasn't saying much. I saw my younger self again, thin and young and scared, but there was something different about her, a glow of confidence and health that helped hide the fear. Of course, not being handcuffed to the table anymore also did wonders for hiding her fear. If my memories served me correctly, this had been a few days after the first interrogation, and there had been one or two in between. Caitlyn sat across from her, patiently sifting through files as she prepared her first question. Vi tried to sit patiently, but stood after a moment, stepping away as if to begin pacing impatiently._

_"Sit back down," Caitlyn said immediately._

_Vi sat, but not without frowning first. "You know I hate this crap. Ask or leave, Cait."_

_"I don't recall giving you permission to shorten my name." Her eyes narrowed slightly._

_"Don't need it," Vi shot back. "I'll figure out a good name for you sooner or later."_

_"Officer, Sheriff, Ma'am," Caitlyn supplied._

_"How about no," Vi responded, sitting back down with her arms crossed. "So what's the subject of the day?"_

_"Your crew," Caitlyn said as she placed a handful of files on the table._

_"We've been over this," Vi said venomously, "They're not-"_

_"We have been over this, yes," Caitlyn interrupted, "And I explained that the common connection between us right now is that you worked with them and I want to know about them. Swallow your indignation and behave." Vi growled something rude under her breath, but didn't outright protest. Caitlyn sighed, thumbing through the files before one caught her eye. "Let's talk about Cesar."_

_Vi frowned, an expression which deepened as she saw the file placed on the table. There was a picture of Cesar clipped to the inside of the file, but Vi could picture the tall, muscular man with his white beard and ponytail without even trying. "Cesar was the ringleader," Vi said with measured anger. "He called all the shots, he made all the rules, and if you had a problem with someone in the crew, you had a problem with him."_

_"Did he have an actual name?" Caitlyn asked._

_Vi shook her head. "If he did, he never told us."_

_"Did-"_

_"Look, can we not start with freakin' Cesar?" Vi interrupted. "Go through the others first. I don't like talking about him."_

_"..Alright," Caitlyn said gently, after quite a long pause. "How about…"_

I stepped into the room and immediately noticed the patches of white smeared across the walls and ceiling of the small room, covering the surface in little spots where a grenade had gone off, the shrapnel tearing gouges in the concrete that had since been filled up by yours truly. After all, I had caused the explosion in the first place. The rest of the room was fairly clean, but upon further inspection I did notice a shell casing discarded in the corner. It belonged to a rifle, likely Zaun-make from the black cartridge, and the casing may have looked tiny in my hextech fingers but it would have sat very comfortably in my human hand and reached from thumb to pinky with little effort.

_"Marco Goodwin," Caitlyn said, placing the file open on the table._

_"Trench," My younger self replied. "He went by Trench."_

_Caitlyn nodded and made a note on the file. "A military veteran," she commented, "Who acquired the rank of lieutenant first class within Piltover's army before… a dishonorable discharge."_

_"He always said that he made the right call, that they'd deserved it. He said it wasn't his fault that torture was a war crime."_

_"And yet it is," Caitlyn replied._

_"I'm not defending him," Vi shot back. "He had a lot of connections after leaving the military. He used them to get us gear. Drills, weapons, explosives, magic tools, whatever we needed for a job."_

_"How would he have connections within the military after such a discharge?" _

_"The connections weren't in Piltover. Actually, just about everywhere except Piltover. Demacia, some black market outposts in Shurima, one of the tribes up in the Freljord… Even one or two contacts in Zaun and Noxus."_

_The mention of the two city-states that posed the biggest political and military threats to Piltover made Caitlyn frown slightly in disapproval. She wrote more notes on the file and then turned it around to face to Vi. "It says here he was known to have lost an arm in the line of duty."_

_"Yeah," Vi confirmed, "Just below the elbow. Lost it to a Noxian axe, he said, and he still took the guy down for it." She paused, smiling slightly. "He taught me a lot of what I know about fighting, even with just one arm. More than you might expect."_

_Caitlyn's gaze grew slightly more wary, and Vi noticed. She let out an annoyed sigh, crossed her arms, and shot Caitlyn a nasty glare. "Don't look at me like that. Yeah I learned from a criminal, does that really freakin' surprise you?"_

_She didn't respond, but did write more notes on the file, in one of the margins where Vi couldn't make it out._

The room was by and large untouched, and the coat of dust on the floor made it obvious that no one had been in here in quite some time. A bit caught in my throat and I coughed again, and could have sworn I heard something shuffling around in the safehouse. I froze sheerly on reflex, only turned to see back into the main room when a full minute had passed in silence, save for the pounding of my heart. I never liked scenarios where I could get jumped from any angle, and aside from the occasional assassin or thief, I generally didn't have to worry about it. That meant that when I did have to worry about it, I worried that much harder.

I stepped out into the main room again as the lights flickered, then died out entirely. The moment they did I had my flashlight back on, anxiety making my eyes dart around the room to make sure no invisible Void-beasts had suddenly appeared to tear my head off. I wasn't fond of the darkness; especially growing up in a world where light meant security from all of the people who wanted to hurt you. It was something I'd gotten a good handle of over the years, otherwise I would have been absolutely terrified right now, but it was still something that set me on edge.

Summoning my guts, I took a step towards the opposite of the three doors, then stepped on something that went 'crunch' and my skeleton tried to jump out of my skin and make a run for it. I calmed myself slowly and then let my foot up to see what I had stepped on. Through the dust that obscured the light of the flashlight I could see small bits of glass, none larger than a fingernail, curved and scattered on the ground. I took a look at the pieces and frowned. Small black lines ran through a few of the pieces, and when I tried to fit them together, the pieces that fit had lines that ran parallel to each other in a long row. It had to have been from a syringe of some kind.

_"Fix?" Caitlyn asked._

_"Yeah," Vi replied, "That's the only name I knew her by. Only name she'd answer to."_

_"The name we have on file is… Qin Chi."_

_"You know," Vi replied, "That actually makes a lot of sense. I always thought she looked Ionian."_

_"Why Fix?" Caitlyn probed._

_"She told me once that she used to be an addict," Vi said, eyes on the ceiling in thought. "She wasn't proud of it, but she was damn proud of breaking the habit. Cesar had helped her, and that's why she stuck around. She kept the name as a reminder, but she treated it like a badge."_

_Caitlyn nodded and wrote some notes. "She has a long history of thievery, but most of it is purely suspicion."_

_"That's because Fix didn't leave evidence. She learned real young how to steal to pay for the drugs. Once she broke the habit, she stole because she liked it. She got real good after that. Taught me how to pick a lock with a bobby pin and crack a safe with a steady hand and a good ear."_

_"I doubt you ever used either one," Caitlyn commented. "Not when punching is a more exciting solution."_

_"It comes in handy with cuffs," Vi responded. Caitlyn made another note in the margin._

I stood up, the frown now stuck on my face. The syringe looked as if it was fairly new, which brought sobering thoughts to mind seeing as Fix had supposedly been clean for over fifteen years. I tried not to think what it could have meant as I put the glass back down and made my way into the next room, on the opposite side of the center room. I was avoiding it on purpose- it was Cesar's room, and I felt like saving that one for last.

Burn marks covered the walls and ceilings, although most of the residual ash had long since fallen and now only the blackened holes and lines remained. One in particular, pointed at an angle diagonally up into the wall, must have drilled a hole a good foot and a half into the concrete, easily thick enough to fit my thumb into. Human thumb, not hextech thumb, sorry. Aside from the burns it was hard to tell if anyone had been in here, but I didn't see signs of disturbed objects or removed dust, so I was willing to guess the answer was 'no'.

_"Rolo Firkledink," Caitlyn said patiently, placing another file on the table._

_Vi… giggled. It was so unexpected that even Caitlyn raised an eyebrow._

_"Did he have a callsign?" the sheriff asked._

_"Rolo? Oh, jeez, no way. He'd have given you an earful if he heard that."_

_"And why might that be?"_

_Vi crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, a smile on her face. "Rolo was nuts, always thought people were trying to steal his work. He tried to dismantle my gloves once, thought they were too derivative." She laughed shortly. "He never accepted a nickname. He wanted people to know it was him behind all of his inventions."_

_"It says here he was forcibly exiled from Bandle City for dangerous scientific practices."_

_"He was trying to build a giant fighting robot. It kept going on fighting sprees. He called it 'Darcy'."_

_"How dangerous was this robot?" Caitlyn asked._

_"Oh man, it was a monster," Vi said with a grin. "I had to take it out of commission once or twice when it went haywire. Thing had lasers and a rocket launcher at one point. Despite all that he was pretty friendly, and he taught me a ton about hextech and robotics. S'why my gauntlets are so kickass."_

_There was a note of pride in the last sentence, a way Vi spoke that made her chest puff out a bit. Caitlyn wrote down another note._

I frowned, thinking over the possibilities. Odds were good Trench and Rolo hadn't been here in awhile, but the syringe made me wonder if Fix had been in the area and if she had relapsed, both of which could be seriously bad news. If there was one thing that would have made Fix more dangerous, it would be desperation. If that was the case, then we were in deep- Fix was the most accomplished thief of all of us, and if she was running the heists, it'd be immensely difficult to track her down and nab her without knowing where she was going to be before she got there. If there was one thing Fix could do better than anyone I knew, it was escape a pursuer.

I turned around to leave Rolo's room and check the last room- Cesar's- when a size-12 hiking boot slammed into my stomach and knocked me back into the room, landing me on my ass on the floor right next to a particularly nasty burn in the concrete where a rocket had gone off inside or something equally dangerous. I had already been on edge from the tension of the lights but the surprise of the attack had knocked the flashlight from my hand. It fell to the floor with a loud clank just as my backside hit the ground with the rest of me soon to follow, and its beam had pointed towards the door and illuminated the hiking boots alongside a pair of dirty jeans whose blue had faded out and left them a dirty blue-white, covered in patches of soot and grime.

If this guy was here to kill me, doing it while I was sitting on my ass in surprise was the best time to do it. I heard footsteps rush into the room and waited, adrenaline making my fingers twitch inside of my gauntlets. When I saw the opportunity I kicked out, as hard as I could. The heavy treading on my boot impacted with the attacker's chest, and I felt a bit of give and heard a deep grunt of pain as I sent him stumbling backwards, giving me time to get back to my feet. Unless this guy was armed, I had a good chance of taking him down now that he'd lost the element of surprise. That said, I was still in a cramped room- I couldn't maneuver around him, and if he did have another trick up his sleeve, I'd be screwed.

I pushed forward, my steps taking me out of the room as I triggered the force multiplier in one of my gloves. It'd make my next hit practically explode with exponentially-boosted kinetic energy, which was just about guaranteed to end the fight one way or another. If he'd come in behind me and shut the door the force would bounce through the chamber and take me out too, but I had a feeling it'd be better than finding out if any other tricks were in store. I stepped forward, howling in exertion as I flung a hextech fist in the attacker's direction, and the collision bellowed with an explosion of sound as the force multiplier triggered, effortlessly flinging him across the room like a limp sack of flesh. He slammed into the far wall, right next to the door back up to the restaurant, and his groan of exertion trailed off into a static silence as I saw the dark shape of his body slump onto the floor.

I sighed from the tension, but didn't waste time in searching the rest of the place. I could hear faint breathing, but not much- if this guy was alive, he'd be a better source of answers than anything in this old place. I made sure he was out like a light and then heaved him over my shoulder, causing a loud clattering down by my feet. I kicked it away, towards the light of my flashlight in the corner, and caught the outline of a gun as it skittered past. I was right to have taken the initiative, then. I didn't waste time getting the flashlight- if there was anyone else around, I didn't want to stay put- and I didn't stop to take a look at the guy until I had made it all the way back to my bike.

I heaved him off of my shoulder onto my bike, grunting with exertion as the beginnings of another rainstorm pattered down onto the ground around me and stuck my hair to the side of my head. I made sure to cuff his hands behind his back and then turned him around to get a look at him. The man was tall, taller than me- which meant at least six feet- and wore jeans and a dark jacket, roughed up and torn over years of abuse. His face…

"Oh god," I said as recognition set in.

His face was fairly average, but it was the kind of everyman look that still drew the ladies- square features, with a defined jawline and symmetrical eyes, somewhat gaunt but not enough to seem starved. His hair was long, about shoulder length, and it either stuck to his face or hung like a mop, thanks to the rain. It hadn't always been that long. He hadn't always worn a beard, either, and while this one was very short, it was also more than the stubble he'd maintained for the years I'd known him.

_"Edwin Spalding the third," Caitlyn said, placing a file of an average-looking man with short hair and permanent stubble onto the table._

_My younger self shook her head. "That's not his name."_

_"That's his birth name, given to him by his father," Caitlyn commented, pointing it out in the file._

_"Which is why he changed it." Vi responded. "His father wasn't family to him. We were family to him."_

_"What does he go by?" Caitlyn asked._

I stared down at the unconscious man slumped over the back of my motorcycle, unable to ignore the memory any more than I could ignore the man that had attacked me.

"Dutch…"


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Over the years, Caitlyn and I have gotten in an obscenely large number of arguments. It's an issue of personality really- Caitlyn is all uptight and believes in law and order and justice, and I'm relaxed and casual and deeply, deeply enjoy making grown men cry after I've beaten them for about twenty minutes or so. Simple conflict of interests, really. As you can imagine, we fight just about constantly, but it's almost always just words. In all this time, there have been only a handful of occasions where I've wanted to rear back, wind up, and punch Caitlyn so hard in the face that her pretty nose got all messed up and her pretty teeth looked nasty covered in blood. I tried once, and you would not believe how quickly I found myself pinned to the ground by half a dozen cops, my hands cuffed behind my back and a boot pressing the side of my head into the ground while Caitlyn grabbed a tissue for her nose. I haven't made that mistake a second time.

Although, to be honest with you, at this point I was seriously considering it.

"Are you completely insane?!" Caitlyn demanded, her voice booming with outrage and authority, combined into a hammer of venomous willpower that refused to let me get a word in edgewise.

"That's-" I began, but she cut me off.

"This is exactly why I don't let you handle these cases by yourself," she howled, "Your impulsive behavior is going to get you killed!"

"But it didn't," I muttered, not really putting much effort into my argument. This wasn't exactly one I thought I could win. I was angry, but not stupid.

"Barely," Caitlyn spat. "What even possessed you to go to the one place that was most likely to be a trap laid specifically for you, alone, without telling anyone where you were?"

I shrugged. "Call it a hunch."

"Imbecilic is what I'll call it."

"Hey, it paid off, right? We got him."

"What do you mean, 'we got him'? You were nosing around and he attacked you. You're quite lucky he did, or we wouldn't have any good reason to hold him here in the first place!"

"Come on, Cait," I said as my eyes drifted towards the one-way mirror. I could see him inside the interrogation room while some detective tried to grill him, all to no effect. "I know him. I can get info from him."

"Knowing him is the problem," Caitlyn said, pressing a hand to her forehead gently. "I- It's like you're not even listening to me, Vi. The fact that you know him is the exact reason you can't be a part of this case." She sighed, trying to calm herself down. I didn't let her.

"This is bullshit," I said, crossing my arms.

"Language, Vi," she warned.

"No, this is bullshit and you know it." I grimaced at her, lacking any actual threat- like I said, bad idea to threaten Caitlyn. "You just don't think I can handle it. You think I still have ties." The way Caitlyn's eyes softened told me I'd hit something. "Holy…" I said, stunned. "You still think I'm keeping ties."

Caitlyn looked me in the eyes, and I could tell she was trying to keep a poker face. Unfortunately for me, I'm not the best at reading poker faces. "Leave, Vi."

"I can't believe you," I spat. Rage clouded my vision, and I had to fight to keep from lashing out. "After all these years-"

"Vi," Caitlyn said firmly, her voice perfectly calm and absolutely in control, "We'll talk about this later. Leave."

My knuckles clenched so hard that I could hear them pop. A million retorts, insults and threats shot through my brain like fireworks and my arms begged me permission to swing and thrash and strike, but before I could say or do anything Caitlyn nodded to someone behind me. A detective I hadn't heard come into the room opened the door and held it open, in just a way to expose the hextech weapon in his shoulder holster. I wasn't sure if that was his little flourish or if Cait had told him to, and right now I wouldn't put it past her, but the message of the gesture was fairly clear.

"This isn't over," I growled as I stormed out of the room and into the dim hallway that housed the holding cells and the interrogation rooms.

The main interrogation room and its subsidiaries (for efficient answer-getting) were all lumped together behind several checkpoints and iron bars in case someone tried to bust out of the holding cell or if someone got a hold of the interrogator and tried to escape. Not very convenient for detectives but even less convenient for criminals, and that's why it was the way it was. The walls were made of brick, painted a sterile white to cover up any patch jobs that had been done over the course of various escape attempts. Black lettering stenciled onto the walls helped the officers recognize each of the plain gray steel doors for what they were, and the lights overhead helped you see all of the nothing that littered the plain concrete floor. It wasn't the sort of place you'd want to dwell around, which is why the detective shot me a suspicious look when I pressed my shoulders to the wall opposite the interrogation room door, crossed my arms… and waited.

He didn't say anything right away, just leaned against the door, his hands resting at his sides with his thumbs in his pockets, and he waited right there with me. Well, maybe 'with' is the wrong word- I was pretty sure he stayed to make sure I didn't go back in. I didn't instigate any conversation, which gave me plenty of time to look the guy over. He was a man with a face like a bulldog's, smushed in with long jowls only barely hidden by his bushy mustache that he must have grown because it made him feel like a 'real cop'. The jowly cheeks made him look older, but I would have probably guessed him to be around 30, relatively green for our department. He had a round chin, round fingers, a round nose, and I wouldn't have been surprised to find out that his toes were round as well. He wore a suit that seemed in denial of the bit of weight he'd put in, and the way it stretched at the stomach made me feel a bit sorry for the buttons, especially if he spent too much time on junk food. Despite it, he held himself with a confidence that told me that he wasn't in any way afraid of me. And it pissed me off even more.

"You're not getting back in," he said shortly, breaking the silence before I could. "Sheriff's orders."

Fury boiled up in my gut before I knew what clever thing I wanted to fire back. My retort ended up being significantly less than clever. I'm not very snarky when I'm mad.

"Fuck the sheriff," I spat, frown marks becoming ingrained in the lines of my face given how hard I was grimacing at the man. "And fuck you, too."

He smirked. He had a real brown-nosey smirk. "You may be the only person that can get away with that," he commented, "But you're still not getting in."

That smirk made it even harder to control myself. Every second I had spent standing there in silence was a second stewing, letting the roiling cauldron of anger inside of me boil and letting me add more and more irrational thoughts into the mix, making the emotional concoction even more unstable and violently explosive. "You wouldn't stop me," I shot back, less a threat than a statement of fact.

"Oh yeah?" he asked, a tone of taunting in his voice.

"Yeah," I said bluntly. "You're getting fat and slow."

The insult didn't faze him. I wasn't sure now if he'd ended up here from pencil-pushing or from experience. "If you wanna try," he said, "I'm standing right here."

I narrowed my eyes. This guy felt protected. By what? The law? Like I cared enough to avoid hitting people who pissed me off, he had to know that wouldn't stop me. Caitlyn's word? What an idiot. Caitlyn's word extended to Caitlyn and nobody else. I pushed myself off the wall and stepped towards him. I didn't speak until my face was barely a foot from his. "I'm in a bad mood, buddy," I threatened, my tone low and failing to contain my anger, "Don't give me a reason."

"You try anything," he replied with that same smirk, "And this whole precinct will be on your ass."

My mask of rage slowly melted away into blank neutrality. He seemed to take notice, and the smallest bit of confusion set into his expression. That's about when I cocked back my left arm, twisted at my waist, and laid him the fuck out.

My sudden wide hook landed on the side of his face and left him on the floor, and after a moment of silence I realized that he wasn't coughing or sputtering or swearing. Must've knocked him unconscious. Chump.

I glanced up at a blinking security camera pointed down the hall, then sighed and walked up the hall to the checkpoint where a man sat in a small room with a bunch of monitors and hadn't stopped staring at the one that showed a spatter of blood and a limp body belonging to Sergeant Bulldog down there. I knocked lightly on the door, and the man tried to hide the surprise from his face. "He's not dead," I said through the holes in the glass. "Lemme in."

The cop thought about it for a moment, but reluctantly buzzed me in. It was a small room, built to do its job and not much else, but it still felt a bit homey, which spoke to how often this guy must have been stationed here. There was an extra chair with no occupant sitting at the desk by the door, and a small coffee pot percolated away under the desk. I grabbed the chair and made myself a cup of the coffee, then nabbed the box of tissues from the desk. I offered a casual salute to the man as I took the stuff back down the hallway, and he nodded dimly as he watched me go.

I set the chair down where I had been standing before, exactly opposite the interrogation room door. I took a long sip of the coffee, which did almost as much to curb my anger as the left hook had done, and then I gently chucked the box of tissues at the cop's head. It bounced off comically, too light to do any damage, but it was enough to shake him awake. He groaned painfully, forcing himself up, and shot me a glare that made me think he wished I was still a criminal. I grinned at him, never dropping my gaze as I took another sip of coffee. "I'm willing to bet you won't do that again," I said.

His grimace made him look even more like an angry mutt. Blood trickled from his nose, and a bright red bruise was forming on his cheek. It'd probably purple real nicely, maybe even last a couple weeks. Good reminder for the guy not to get on my bad side.

Sergeant Bulldog snarled. "You'll-"

"I'm sorry," I interrupted loudly, cupping a hand around one ear, "Did I just hear 'Round Two'?" I looked up and down the hallway in silence, my expression as quizzical and insulting as I could possibly manage. Bulldog remained silent. "Huh. Must've just been the wind. Could you go track down a donut for me, Sergeant Bulldog?"

It must have taken all of his restraint to remain silent and passive. Experience over pencil-pushing, then. It'd be fun to push this guy around. I sipped my coffee silently, thinking about what I'd have to do to get myself back in this case. I won't bother explaining the depths of my thought process, because in the time it took me to finish the drink, I'd come up with a whole lot of nothing and a side of zero. When it dawned on me that I was going nowhere fast with that train of thought I frowned, placed the cup on the floor next to my chair, and closed my eyes.

I slept light, like I had as a child, and the moment the door creaked open my eyes flicked open with it. I blinked a couple of times as my eyes readjusted from the darkness of my eyelids to the dimness of the hallway. Caitlyn stood at the doorway, and the way she looked down at me told me she didn't like what she was doing.

"I would say I'm surprised to see you still here," Caitlyn mused, "But I'm afraid I know you too well. What does surprise me," she added with a glance at Sergeant Bulldog, "Is why you weren't persuaded to relocate."

Bulldog opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. "I punched him in the face."

I crossed my arms behind my head and leaned back in the chair. My smile was that of a satisfied child, and it felt fantastic. Bulldog looked positively sour, and I could see that the hit was getting to him- he wavered slightly where he stood, and looked like he was fighting off a mother of a migraine from having his brain bounced around in his skull.

A vein in Caitlyn's temple seemed to throb for an instant. "Is that so?"

"Yup," I said warmly. "Clocked 'em right where he stood. Felt good, too. I'd do it again if he gave me a reason." I shot a glare at him. "And he knows that. Don't you, Sergeant Bulldog?"

"Detective Whitting," Caitlyn spoke over me, both correcting me (ha!) and addressing Sergeant Bulldog, "Please return to the offices."

He looked as if he wanted to object, but saw the smoldering glare Caitlyn had leveled at me and didn't want it pointed in his direction. He nodded silently and started to walk off.

"Put some ice on your face," I called after him. I couldn't hide my smile.

I waited for Caitlyn to speak, but she remained silent. When I turned my attention back to her face, I saw a hot irritation in her glare. It put me on edge, not because it was directed at me- I mean, she definitely didn't like me punching people, cop or otherwise, but that wasn't why she was angry, just a convenient outlet. I'd seen that frustration on her face before, and I had a feeling I knew what it meant.

"He's not talking," I said slowly. My smile faded, but only slightly.

"Not a sound," she confirmed. "The last thing he said was that he wanted to speak to you."

"When was that?" I asked.

"Three hours ago."

I blinked. I wasn't sleeping heavily, but I hadn't realized it had been that long. That explained why Sergeant Bulldog looked significantly worse for wear- had he walked off to tend to his aching head or his injury, it probably would have woken me up. He'd stood there and waited with a bloody nose and a bruising cheek and a migraine for three hours, maybe more? I thought about it, and couldn't help but gain a bit of respect for the jowly bastard.

"You tried to get answers out of him for three hours?"

"I'm certain he knows something," she thought out loud, "But I can't glean the details from him if he's practicing his Sona impression."

I raised my eyebrows. "The Demacian girl? The… mute?"

"Correct."

"Cupcake, did… did you just make a reference?"

The humor managed to get the smallest smile out of her, barely a curve at the corner of her lips. "I've had plenty of time to think of it."

I stared at her in astonishment for a moment before I returned to the subject at hand. "So it took you three hours to come get me," I said, more of a comment than a question.

"I don't want you on this case, Vi," she replied softly, the slightest hint of pleading in her voice, "But I don't want the robberies to continue, either. We're still looking into other angles…"

"But they're turning up crap," I finished. I wasn't the best detective, but I could connect dots.

Caitlyn nodded reluctantly. I frowned, crossing my arms over my chest. I wanted to gloat, to make sure she knew how great it felt to be needed like this, but… I didn't feel right doing it. I'd only feel like a jerk. My grin had completely faded by now, and I pushed myself up from the chair with a serious expression on my face. "Alright," I said slowly, keeping my tone even, "I'll talk to him on one condition."

"You're either in all the way or you're not in at all," she said.

"You read my mind." I replied with a nod. "What's it gonna be?"

Caitlyn bit her lower lip nervously. It was goddamn adorable, but this was neither the time nor the place to make jokes about it like I normally would. After a pause too long to be simple hesitation, she nodded. "I'll bring you in," she said slowly, "As long as you don't go running off following leads alone again. We're partners on this one."

I smiled softly. "Works for me. Piltover's finest, right?"

Caitlyn nodded. "Piltover's finest."

She led me back into the interrogation room and held the door open for me into Dutch's chamber. I felt uneasy being in the room, but repetition over the years made it less of a queasy, fearful feeling and more of a niggling annoyance at the back of my mind. What really set me on edge was Dutch's gaze as I met his eyes.

He looked like someone had stacked crap to roughly his height and plopped it in a chair. Hunger had made his cheeks look gaunt and bare against his strong jawline that was barely noticeable through a thin, dirty beard, and his hair hung ratty and unwashed for what must have been several days. His clothes were worn and likely had been in his possession for years, and helped contribute to the unwashed stench in the air. His hands looked thin and weak, powerless even if they hadn't been cuffed to a very familiar link bolted into the table. But his eyes were what made me hesitate for a step, stop to look him over rather than continuing further into the room. There was a silent intensity to the way his blue eyes bore into me, looking past my clothes and my tattoos and seeing right into the girl I had used to be. Despite the harsh conditions he had been through his eyes retained an intelligent glitter, a sharp edge that made it clear that the years had done plenty to his body but nothing to his mind.

"You look like someone made a man out of dead squirrels and a giant turd," I commented as I sat down in the chair opposite Dutch. "Smell like it, too."

He smirked, and I noticed a chip in one of his teeth. "Nice to see you too, Vi."

"Not feeling friendly, Dutch," I said evenly, trying my damnedest to keep my emotions behind the lock and key of discipline. I had a feeling it wouldn't last long, but it couldn't hurt to try. "Talk."

He chuckled softly.

"What's funny?" I asked. Caitlyn stepped past me, silent as a ghost, and leaned against the wall behind Dutch. I'd seen her do it before, and there was some psychological reason behind it- something about distracting the perp- but it didn't matter to me and it didn't seem to affect him either.

"You wouldn't have practiced this sort of thing," he commented, "It helps if you ask me what you wanna know, but hey, that would make too much sense. I bet if I shut up you'd start punching, right?"

"I'm likely to start whether or not you keep going," I said menacingly, but the threat only earned me another chuckle.

"That's what I figured," Dutch said cheerfully. "You haven't changed a bit."

Anger flared up in my gut. "Watch your fucking mouth, Dutch." The words came out low and slow, bubbling with disgust and rage. I looked into his cool eyes with a gaze burning with a temper I was barely keeping contained. The idea that he felt comfortable around me made sense, in a sickening kind of way. I knew I'd feel like this talking to him, but it was one thing to imagine it and another thing entirely to be in the moment, where the sound of his voice brought back a million memories I wished I couldn't remember.

"Fine," he said gently, raising his hands as far as he could- a couple inches above the table- and spreading his fingers wide in concession. "I'll try not to dig up the past. Won't be easy, but I'll try."

The words 'thank you' sprang to mind, but I didn't voice them. He didn't deserve the gratitude. "What do you know about the bank heists?"

Dutch smiled again. "Other than the fact that the Sheriff wants to stop them real bad?" he asked with a shoulder nudge towards Caitlyn behind him. "Nothing."

"That's not good enough," I said bluntly.

"But it's the truth," Dutch responded with the same tone. "I didn't know it was happening until you guys started asking about it."

I frowned, and my eyes shot up to Caitlyn. Her expression was reserved, given that Dutch could still see her face in the mirrored glass that acted as a window for the viewing room. She twitched her head ever so slightly, and I read that as a nod. She must have gotten just as much from him before. I sighed. Time to change gears.

"Why were you at the safehouse?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I live there."

"No you don't," I responded immediately, "Not with the way that place looked."

"Well, okay," he admitted, "You're half-right. I don't sleep there, I just keep stuff there."

"Do you still live with the others?"

Dutch smiled, and this time I noticed a bit of grime in between his teeth. "On the streets? No, they don't live with me. None of us have seen each other in years. You made sure of that."

Something settled in my gut like a stone. Guilt? No, couldn't be. Regret? Not exactly. It was hard to place the feeling, no words I knew really stuck to it, but it still sat there, making me feel more and more uncomfortable with Dutch's laser-like gaze on me.

"Where did you see them last?" I asked.

"Why are you so interested in our gang?" Dutch asked back.

"We ask the questions here," Caitlyn interrupted.

"Cait," I snapped abruptly, and my eyes shot to her with irritation. "Quiet." She raised a surprised eyebrow, and I immediately felt bad for lashing out at her. My eyes murmured an apology, and I knew she understood.

I turned my eyes back to Dutch in time to see him raise his dirty eyebrows. "Cait, huh?" he said with amusement.

"Don't start," I snarled. I could see in his eyes that he wanted badly to get all kinds of personal about the shortened name. "We… have reason to believe that someone from the old crew is orchestrating these robberies."

"Is that so?" he asked.

I answered him with a question. "Where's the last place you saw Cesar?"

I expected Dutch to shrug, to say he had no idea. I expected him to remain calm and hide his emotions. I even expected him to chide me for asking so directly. What I didn't expect was for him to laugh. It sounded full, hearty, and absolutely genuine, and the way it echoed in the room set me on edge better than any other answer would have. He laughed like that for a time while I traded looks with Caitlyn. That was anything but a good sign.

"You mean," he said as he struggled to catch his breath, "You mean you had no idea?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked, irritated at the mystery.

"Why do you think," he asked in short breaths as he gathered himself, "Why do you think we stopped operating a bit after you joined the force?"

I didn't answer.

"Around the time he found out you had been recruited instead of arrested," Dutch said with a steadily sobering tone, "We found him dead in his room. He put a gun in his mouth, Vi," he added calmly, "Blew his brains all over the wall."

Words failed to congeal into sentences in my mouth. I'd had no contact with them, no way of knowing. Cesar was a lot of things, but most importantly, he was a leader. If he'd killed himself, the crew wouldn't stick together. And with no one to support him, Dutch had ended up… here.

I stared straight ahead, frozen in surprise. Dutch smiled. "Wow. You had no idea?" He looked at Caitlyn in the mirror. "What else haven't you told her, Cait?"

That snapped me out of it. I stood up, walked around the table, and hit Dutch so hard in the face that a joint in his neck popped. He didn't make a sound, but spat a spray of blood onto the table, complete with the chipped tooth. He chuckled softly, and I stood there as the cuts on my hand from his teeth throbbed painfully, dragging me from the stupor that the news had put me in. "I said," I growled as my hand clenched for a second strike, so tight that I felt my knuckles pop, "Don't. Start."

He spat another bit of blood from his mouth, and it dribbled onto his grody beard. "Message received, officer," he joked.

I hit him again.

While he reeled, coughed, groaned, sputtered and generally looked like a wreck, I sat back down and wiped the blood from my knuckles on the leather of my jacket. It took focus and willpower to force the anger back down, to lock it away behind restraint, and I knew it wouldn't last. My temper was notorious, and Dutch knew that. I couldn't let him keep getting to me.

"When's the last time you contacted them?" I asked slowly.

Dutch winced, from the pain more than anything, but when he met my gaze he realized I wasn't afraid to hit him again. I wasn't sure if it was fear or something else that motivated him to talk, but I saw his idea of me change subtly through the way he looked at me with his sharp blue eyes.

"Which one?" he asked back.

I thought on the question for a moment, back to when I had investigated the safehouse. "Trench," I said firmly.

Dutch's smile returned, although it looked even worse with a tooth missing and the rest coated in blood. He looked a bit shaky, but otherwise the pain didn't seem to be affecting him.

"Trench?" he said slowly. "Yeah, I think I know where you can find Trench. Of course, that's as long as he hasn't been run out of town yet."


End file.
